Finally, finally the festering sore that is the Darfur region in Sudan is getting the political attention it deserves — but not from the Muslim community.
To its credit, the African Union has joined a world chorus of condemnation about the ethnic cleansing under way in the western Sudan. Already 10 000 people have died at the hands of a latter-day horror, the Janjaweed, the killers on horse- and camel-back who stalk the Darfur. A million more people have fled to the borders of Chad and the encircling refugee camps. Many women in the camps have told Amnesty International that they have been raped — a horrific form of subjugation also witnessed in Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan.
With the Rwandan genocide in sharp relief on its 10th anniversary, the United Nations sat up and took notice. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan led a fact-finding mission in July and concurred with his aid workers, who called the Darfur persecution the world’s worst contemporary humanitarian disaster. The United States is threatening sanctions. The AU is sending troops, and observers were dispatched this week to rein in the murderous horsemen to lay the basis for a peace deal. Without peace in Darfur, Sudan will continue to flounder.
In the cacophony of rage, one voice is missing — that of Muslim communities who have been so vocal, both globally and locally, in their condemnation of the war in Iraq and the repression in Palestine.
Could their deafening silence be because Sudan is ruled by the Islamist government of Omar al-Bashir? Could it be ethnic — because those dying and fleeing are of African and not Arabic Muslim stock? South Africa’s Islamic community is sizeable, influential and vocal — in the past two years the largest political marches in the country have been led by Muslims aghast at the abuses in Iraq and Palestine. They have held vigils outside the US’s diplomatic missions.
Where are the marches on the Sudanese embassy? Where are the vigils?Â
In an initiative that is welcome, Islamic scholars Shuaib Manjra and Fazel Dawjee circulated a letter calling on the Sudanese government to disarm, disband and withdraw all government-supported militia in Darfur; to identify and prosecute all government officials responsible for warm crimes; and to provide relief and restitution to the victims of violence. They write: “There is little doubt that the rapid violence has been directly orchestrated by the Sudanese government. The Sudanese government began recruiting the militias last year, has supplied them with weapons, and has provided military air support, which has included the bombing of dozens of villages.”
They offer an opportunity for Muslims to show that their faith and way of life opposes all assaults on the fundamental rights of fellow humans, regardless of who is the victim or the perpetrator. Solidarity and moral outrage should never be selective.
The truth will out
South Africa’s football authorities thought they could dribble past everyone without being tackled over the 1999 Motimele report on match-rigging. They were wrong — the truth, the poet tells us, will out. Your favourite newspaper has read the document — suppressed by the Premier Soccer League (PSL)— and reveals its explosive contents in this edition.
It shows that officialdom either ignored, or refused to act on the early warning signs that match-fixing had infected our soccer.
At least one referee and one club official have been charged with corruption over the past month — five years after they were directly or indirectly fingered by advocate McCaps Motimele.
Motimele urged the South African Football Association to restructure its referees’ committee — and was ignored. Now one of the men who appointed the referees’ panel is facing a jail sentence. There has also been no move to appoint the ombudsman proposed by Motimele as a watchdog over the conduct of referees.
The Mail & Guardian can offer no new solutions to the woes afflicting the sport. Motimele, and Judge Benjamin Pickard before him, have recommended that, in the interests of good governance, management specialists should be brought in to run the sport instead of the current structure, where club owners rule the roost. Given the rottenness exposed by the police, the club owners’ defence — that they should determine how the game is run because they have a financial interest in it — does not wash.
The millions of South Africans who follow the game are its principal shareholders. The men and women who sit on the PSL board of governors cannot, with clear consciences, claim to have acted in the best interests of soccer rather than those of their own clubs.
Motimele correctly points out that football survives on the people’s goodwill. “Soccer needs to [start] building a solid foundation based on sound development programmes and management structures for its future survival and competition. This goodwill may not last forever without being reciprocated.”